Large chunks of yesterday morning and afternoon got eaten up by the new Shadow Unit episode. Ow. Good story, but ow. If you've not read any of Shadow Unit before I would recommend starting at the beginning, not with the most recent episode, as a lot of the interest/pay-off is because you know the characters and it just wouldn't have the same impact without that. Basically Shadow Unit is a story (series) about FBI agents hunting down serial killers with anomalous abilities, structured mostly like a TV series (with some meta conceit about actors & network & stuff on the website for flavour, but to be honest I don't pay much attention to that). So each episode/story has its case-of-the-week and the big over-arching story is about the anomaly and what it is. And it's about the people - the FBI agents. Which is why this novel-length episode works best in place rather than as a jump off point - it resolves the cliff-hanger from the end of season 2 (which I'd thought might end up being stretched out over more of this season), but resolves it in such a way that it breaks the team emotionally. Ow.

It being novel length I guess it maybe counts as a book? In which case it's 4. "The Unicorn Evils" (Shadow Unit) by Emma Bull & Elizabeth Bear.

J spent a lot of the afternoon watching the extras on the Life on Mars disc he's got from lovefilm at the moment and I was partly watching over his shoulder. I suspect he's right that I would probably have enjoyed watching LoM, but we'd end up stringing the episodes out over a looooong time as we already have a lot of TV lined up. And I so prefer to get my narrative entertainment in text, so I'd always rather watch documentaries than stories on the telly. (Which of course means Shadow Unit is just right for me - it's all text but some of the influences are TV series like The X-files & Criminal Minds, so it's like someone made a TV series just for people like me, ie not on the telly!) I did particularly like the way it's kind of the anti-nostalgia show, I much prefer being an adult now than what it would be like in the early 70s. Although, of course, if I was an adult in the early 70s I'd've been a different person ...

To be honest, I think Life On Mars is one of the best things that's been on telly for years. BUT, having watched it when it was on as a series, I think it would bear the watching as a chunk rather than being strung out. There's bits that match up neatly and it would be a shame for that larger picture to be lost. But, that's just my opinion. 8 ) I felt like it was an excellent book made visual, but then I got really into it!8 )

It's just me being weird about visual entertainment - part of it's that the pacing is decided by someone else whereas when I'm reading I skim the parts I'm less interested in or go slower & re-read the bits that really grab me (which aren't necessarily the same on every read of something, part of the joys of re-reading things). But this does mean that in almost every case I'd really rather read a book with the same story rather than watch the tv/film version.

J's certainly enjoying LoM, even if it has taken him this long to get round to seeing it :)

Good to know I'm not the only SU reader around here. :) I was very happy to see they published the new story both online and in downloadable formats for e-readers. I plunked it on my Nook to read when I finish the book I'm currently in the middle of. Anxiously awaiting the rest of them in epub format so I can have the whole lot on my reader.

Heh. I thought to myself as I wrote the bit about Criminal Minds being an influence that it was probably right up your street & if you weren't reading it already I should probably make sure you saw it ;)